That there are many ancient oaks, veterans battered by the storms of centuries, we well know; but a Wellingtonia of Abraham’s time is unthinkable; so are the legends of the Mount of Olives. Surely enough, there are trees there, grey and gnarled, that are the descendants of those under which our Lord preached. Some of them are hoary with age and may have been a third, hardly a second, generation from those sacred ancestors. But though standing on the holy mount I looked upon them with all the veneration, all the awe inspired by the divine traditions of the place, I could not persuade myself that they were the very trees among which the Saviour had so often wandered. The oldest tree in the world of the planting of which there is any record, is the famous Bō tree of Anuradhapura, of which I shall tell later on. * * * * * A few days later I was steaming out of the Golden Gates into the Pacific Ocean—anything but pacific, as my experience went to show. For the first day or two mountainous fogs that looked so solid that we almost expected to hear the ship crash and be shattered to splinters as we charged into them. Then a succession of gales, in one of which our starboard paddle was smashed, and we had to steam the second half of our voyage steering against the remaining one. Not a pleasant experience, for we were in the month of June, and as the old rhyme in regard to typhoons goes, a risky time. June, coming soon. July, mind your eye. August, must. September, remember. October, all over! However, in time the old slowcoach of a walking-beam ship landed us in Japan, of which I need say nothing here. Looking back upon my sojourn in California, it is a sad thought that none of the men with whom I spent those happy days are left—my three English travelling companions all gone—Mackay, Fair, Ralston, D. O. Mills, Curly Bill and the rest all dead. I believe that Mrs. Whitelaw Reid is the only person whom I knew out in the Far West who is yet alive. But she was a little child!